Hundreds more migrants reach Italy from Africa

ROME, May 14 (Reuters) - Hundreds of immigrants from north
Africa reached Italian shores in the last 24 hours, adding to a
crisis that has raised tension between European governments and
prompted plans to temporarily restore border controls.

Police said eight boats carrying around 1,300 people from
Tunisia and Libya reached the tiny island of Lampedusa on Friday
and overnight, bringing the total number of immigrants there to
1,800.

Lampedusa, roughly midway between Sicily and Tunisia, has
been at the centre of an immigration crisis triggered by the
upheavals in North Africa.

More than 35,000 Africans, including around 24,000 illegal
immigrants from Tunisia, have reached it and other small Italian
islands since the start of the year.

Thousands have been shipped to reception centres on the
mainland since Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi pledged at the
end of March to clear Lampedusa, but the overloaded boats
continue to arrive.

Lampedusa's regular population of about 5,000 has been at
times outnumbered by migrants sleeping in improvised tent
encampments dotted around the island, which in normal times
lives from fishing and tourism.

Italy has urged other EU governments to help, but such calls
have raised alarm elsewhere in Europe.

"Europe is not doing what it had promised to do," Interior
Minister Roberto Maroni, a senior official of the anti-immigrant
Northern League party that is Berlusconi's main ally, said late
on Friday.

"In Libya there is a war, and as long as there is war the
refugees will continue to arrive," he said.

He added that an accord with Tunisia to stem the flow of
migrants appeared to be working, although at least 218 of those
who arrived in Lampedusa overnight came from there.

France and Italy are pushing for European states to be
allowed to suspend the open frontiers policy that eliminated
border controls between most EU states under the Schengen
treaty, and reinstate controls in exceptional circumstances.
(Reporting by Silvia Aloisi)